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The post-bonus season merry-go-round in equity research has started spinning, with a number of analysts leaving Citigroup in recent weeks and others resigning from Morgan Stanley and Barclays.

Hiring season in the City of London traditionally gets underway in late February and March as bonus payouts land in accounts, freeing individuals up to resign ahead of moves to rivals.

At Citi, a number of analysts have already resigned, according to people familiar with the situation.

They include Alastair Johnson, a food retail analyst who ranked as the second-best in the sector in last year's Thomson Reuters Extel survey, based on commissions paid. He is moving to the buyside and will join Majedie Asset Management as a senior analyst in the summer.

Adrian Cattley, a generalist who previously worked in Citi's well-regarded economics and strategy team before moving to sector research, has also left ahead of a move to the buyside, while Ruchi Malaiya, a media analyst has also left.

Malaiya is understood to be joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which has also hired Peter Bisztyga, a utilities analyst at Barclays who has featured prominently in industry rankings in previous years, and Lauren Favre, a chemicals analyst who returns to BAML after a brief stint at Millennium Partners.

Another analyst on the move is Rupinder Vig, a member of the Morgan Stanley's aerospace equity research team who ranked as the second-best analyst in the sector based on votes from corporates. Vig is understood to be moving to the buyside.

Such moves typically trigger a domino effect, with firms that suffer departures hiring from rivals to fill the gaps. Citi in turn has hired a number of analysts, including Sarel De Witt in Johannesburg, who has joined from Structor Investment, and engineering specialist Klas Bergelind from Nomura. The bank has also hired for its telecoms and pharma teams.